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Book Blitz: Misplaced by Lee Murray

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Misplaced by Lee Murray

Dream cars have no registration plate…

One evening, Adam’s mum pops out for the milk and doesn’t come back, launching a frantic nationwide search. Yet after weeks with no leads, the television crews drift away, the police start asking hairy questions, and Adam’s dad starts seeing someone else. Adam’s life is falling apart. But then he meets Skye, who it seems has misplaced a parent too, and things start to look up. That is, until a body is found…

I lie in the dark.

It’s quiet, except for the faint churn of the dishwasher downstairs, but I can’t sleep. When I was little, if I woke up from a bad dream, I’d hop into Mum’s side of the bed and snuggle into her.

‘Just a bad dream,’ she would murmur, half-asleep, wrapping an arm around me. ‘It’s not real. Go back to sleep.’

But this dream is real.

In the darkness, I reach out my mind to Mum, closing my eyes and sending my thoughts swirling into the universe like tendrils of smoke pouring into the farthest corners, searching for her. If I concentrate hard, I feel I can almost reach her. I can hear her breathe, smell the scent of her, feel the pulsing of her heart, the warmth of her skin. Intuitively, I know that breathing will break the connection, tenuous like a spider web weighed down after rain. I take a deep breath and hold it... holding... holding... holding us together for as long as I can so she knows I’m here and I’m thinking about her, missing her. My head pounds from the strain. I screw my eyes up, feel the tension between my eyebrows. Holding. My heart races. My cheeks scream. Chest bursting. Still, I hold on. Eventually, I can’t help it: I have to breathe.

I lose her in a whoosh.

Lee Murray is a full-time writer and editor with masters degrees in science and management. Lee wrote Misplaced after a friend, Florence, went missing from her home in France in 2003. Sadly, Florence is still missing. Lee lives in Tauranga, New Zealand with her husband and their two teenaged children.